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Should Governments Fund
Faith-Based Groups?

9 Feb 2010.
The Constitution of the United States has been interpreted from
the very early days of our nation to forbid the federal
government from favoring any particular religion. The doctrine is known as
the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Our 14th Amendment
extends the prohibition to state governments. Municipalities and
other governmental agencies are also understood to be prohibited
from favoring any particular religion. Several key Founders
and Framers —
Madison, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and Washington —
did not want anything like the Church of England to arise in the
new nation, which they wanted to establish on principles of
reason, not religion. These men were not anti-religious, but
they knew from experience and their knowledge of history that
governments with strong ties to a particular religion inevitably
diminish religious freedom and increase religious tyranny.

From the beginning,
the relationship of the state to religion has been a complicated
one in our country. I repeat: the Founders and Framers of the
Constitution were not anti-religion. Indeed, some were
devout Christians. Some were Deists; some had no allegiance to
any particular organized religious group. Contrary to what some
Christian propagandists maintain,
the
United States of America was not founded as a Christian nation.*
The principles of our Constitution are not Christian principles.
They are not even theistic principles; God is not mentioned at
all in the Constitution. This was not because the Framers didn't
believe in a God. All of them seem to have believed in the
existence of what was referred to in the Declaration of
Independence as "our creator." What the Framers
believed about a creator, or the Bible for that matter, is a
separate issue from what they put into law in the Constitution.

This fact that the
Framers wanted religions to be independent of government and
government independent from the control of any particular
religion has never set well with a certain segment of the
Christian community in America. From the beginning of our
nation, there have been organized movements by groups of
Christians to undermine the separation of church and state, and
to remake the nation to fit with their view of how things should
be. Some of the undermining attempts have been blatant: saying
Christian prayers in classrooms of public schools, banning the
teaching of evolution in public classrooms, opening sessions of Congress or the Supreme
Court with a Christian prayer, swearing to the tell the truth "so help me
God" in courtroom oaths, putting "in God we trust" on our money
and "under God" in the pledge of allegiance, and having our
president end speeches with "God bless America" and being sworn in by holding one hand on a Bible
— to name just
a few. Some of these attempts to undermine the independence of
the state from religion have been stopped by our courts, much to
the dismay of those Christians who believe the U.S. is and
should be a Christian nation governed by principles they think
are established in the Bible.

Despite what the
Christian propagandists say, the separation of church and state
is not anti-religious. It is just the opposite. The majority of
the Framers realized that the best way to protect the right of
people to believe whatever they want about God and spirits and
immortality, etc., is to not let any one religious group have
the power to dictate what others must believe and do. Jefferson
and others were familiar with the arguments of John Locke for
separation of church and state. The fate of one's immortal soul
depends on one's religious beliefs, argued Locke; thus, the
issue was too important to every individual to have the
government tell them what they must believe. Better to let the
government deal with things that matter in this world, i.e.,
concern itself with secular matters only. Let the various
religions concern themselves with matters of the "world beyond
this world."

Separation forced religious groups to become what were called
"factions" in the 18th century (what we call special interest
groups). The great danger is that one faction will become so
powerful as to control all the branches of government. One
faction could envelop a majority of citizens and could run
roughshod over minorities. The only protection we have from a
tyranny of the majority is our law, especially the Bill of
Rights and other amendments to the federal constitution. When
you hear a group of people clamor about how they want to "take
back the nation," know that what they mean is that they want to
take over the nation. Such groups may even claim that
they want a "return to rule under the Constitution," when in
fact what they want is to undermine the Constitution and replace
it with their own (usually Christian) vision of how they think
our country should be governed. Only once in our nation's history has
a Christian subversive group been upfront about remaking
the nation and doing so the way the Framers allowed: the
Temperance League's short-lived success with Prohibition.
Getting constitutional amendments passed is time-consuming and
difficult, as those who tried to prohibit abortion and equal
rights for gays have found. The law may be what
protects us from tyranny, but ultimately it is the courts that
tell us what the law will be. That is why subversives always
attack the judiciary first and why presidents try to pack the
courts with judges who agree with their politics.

The Establishment Clause
has never been interpreted to mean that religion can have no
role in government. That idea is, in effect, absurd on its face
since most people in the U.S. are affiliated with some sort of
religion or have some sort of loose set of religious beliefs. Unless
a person's religion has no effect on his
life, religion will always play a role in government.
Furthermore, our laws have been interpreted to allow religions
to get special privileges, such as tax breaks on properties a
church owns. Technically, religions get tax breaks not because
they're religions but because they are considered non-profit
organizations.
Being a non-profit doesn't mean they're not wealthy or don't
have a huge payroll. All it means, as far as I can tell, is
that religious institutions don't have stockholders. I'm not
a lawyer, however, so I could be wrong about why mega-rich
churches whose ministers get obscene amounts of money for
ministering over their organizations are considered non-profits.
If we took away the tax breaks now granted to so-called
"faith-based" organizations, would we have to take away the
privileges now granted to other NGOs (non-governmental
organizations) that are not "faith-based"?
Would all those tax deductions we now get for donating to the JREF, CFI, Skeptics Society, and other not-for-profit skeptical,
humanist, or atheist organizations evaporate?

Even if we were able
to rewrite the law so that religions were not given special
status regarding tax exemptions, while non-religious non-profits
were able to retain their privileges, what would we do about
non-profit charities or social services run by "faith-based"
groups? Maybe the Catholic Church shouldn't get a tax break on
the property it owns or the money it rakes in from donations,
but what about Catholic schools, hospitals, homeless shelters,
etc.? Schools we might easily dismiss, since religious
instruction is an intrinsic part of such schools, and
governments shouldn't subsidize instruction in any particular
religion. But what about Catholic hospitals? It can't be denied
that they provide a vital service to the community, but if they
get government subsidies or tax breaks, does that mean they can
disregard discrimination laws and hire only Catholics or fire
anyone who leaves the church?
Yes, if the country is Germany. Maybe,
if the
country is England or any other country in the UK. Those
places don't have a constitution requiring separation of church
and state, of course. Yet, here in the U.S., where we supposedly
have such a separation, the G. W. Bush administration opened the door
to the U.S. treasury to "faith-based" groups and established the
Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. President
Obama vowed to change things, but in his first year in office he
seems to have done little more than change the name of the
"faith-based" operation (it's now called the White House Office
of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships). Obama had vowed
to ensure that its practices would reflect a strong separation
of church and state.

One year after
president Obama set up an advisory council to reform the
faith-based office in the White House,
a coalition of religious, civil rights, and secular humanist
groups issued an open letter urging the president to "take
additional actions to prevent government-funded religious
discrimination and protect social service beneficiaries from
unwelcome proselytizing." In a separate action,
the Center for Inquiry issued its own open letter to the
president. CFI is a non-profit "that encourages evidence-based
inquiry into science, pseudoscience, medicine and health,
religion, ethics, secularism, and society." CFI rebukes the
recommendations of the advisory committee: "there are some
serious deficiencies in the council's recommendations that could
allow for continued direct federal, state, and local government
funding of religious activities and proselytization." The CFI
letter went on to chastise the White House for not doing
"anything to ban religious organizations that receive federal
dollars from discriminating against employees and volunteers on
the basis of religion."

Nobody seems to be
concerned about the government funding the activities of
religious groups. Are these critics implying that it is
justifiable for religious groups to discriminate on the basis of
religion in hiring or in screening volunteers as long as the
religious group isn't federally funded? Should religious
groups be federally funded at all? But even if they are
federally funded, shouldn't they have to obey the same
employment laws that other organizations have to follow. If it's
illegal for Wal-Mart to refuse to hire someone because she's
Catholic, shouldn't it be illegal for the Catholic Church to
refuse to hire someone because she's not Catholic (assuming
being Catholic has nothing to do with the job, e.g., nursing,
feeding the poor, working the cash register, sorting clothes at a thrift shop, making
breakfast)?

Given the fact that
the local and federal governments of Australia seem to see
giving money to a group or individual as a business investment,
it is inevitable that many who are denied funding are going to
claim they were discriminated against. The laws that allow such
behavior by the government seem to provide an open door to
discrimination of every kind by those in power. They can refuse
funds to anyone on the grounds that they don't think it's a good
investment. If a Muslim or atheist group applies for funds, they
can say "sorry, we don't think there's a big enough market."
Whether governments should be subsidizing activities of
religious groups is another issue altogether. In any case, I
would hope that whether a government funds the activity of a
religious group would be considered irrelevant to the issue of
whether that religious group can legally discriminate in hiring
or firing on the basis of religion.

I have to admit I was
caught off guard by the opening sentence of
a recent article in TheAge, an Australian media outlet. The
article began: "An atheist convention in Melbourne has sold out
six weeks before it opens despite no aid from any level of
government, organisers said." In the U.S., I don't think it
would even occur to any atheist group to expect any level of
government to provide financial assistance for a convention.
David Nicholls, the president of Atheist Foundation of
Australia, which is sponsoring the convention, was quoted as
saying that the state government had ''stabbed the people of
Victoria in the back'' by not helping, forcing organizers to
hire smaller venues. ''We were very annoyed that all three tiers
of government refused to assist us,'' he said.

I contacted Mr.
Nicholls and asked him if it is the position of the Atheist
Foundation of Australia that government should be funding
atheist organizations and did he think it was right for
government to fund religious groups. Here is his response:

The Atheist Foundation of Australia approached all three
tiers of Government in an attempt to enter a sponsorship deal
with them. The Global Atheist Convention initially showed
signs of being quite a large affair and as it turned out it
was larger than expected and could have attracted many more
folk than our present sold out situation.

The AFA is a not-for-profit organisation and cannot afford
risk taking to any large degree. As we were to be responsible
for bringing many millions of dollars from overseas and
interstate our advice from the Victorian Government was to
apply for assistance. The criterion was a convention had to
have over a thousand patrons with a mix from around the planet
and Australia. We have amply and overly met those conditions.

The Vic. Govt. has poorly served Victoria. This is because
of the loss of revenue from patrons who will not be attending.
Our advertising was limited as was the size of the venue
because of Govt procrastination and then refusal to help with
a substantially smaller amount than other such like events.
For instance, the four-and-a-half million1 given to the
Parliament of the World’s Religions. In total, we asked
for $270,000 shared between the three tiers of government.

This is not a matter of funding for Atheism or theism. It
would not matter if it had been a convention of basket weavers
who met the criteria. It is all about attracting outside funds
into Victoria.

The AFA is opposed to Governments giving tax breaks, perks,
grants, subsidies etc. to religions if they are to be used for
religious purposes excluding charity. The non-accountability
of the present system means all tax payers are footing the
bill to promote religion. The pernicious part of this is the
interference to young minds in state schools with chaplaincy
programs and religious indoctrination all paid for by you
whether that is your wish or not.

According to its
website, "The Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions
was created to cultivate harmony among the world's religious and
spiritual communities and foster their engagement with the world
and its guiding institutions in order to achieve a just,
peaceful and sustainable world." So, isn't the government
promoting religion by underwriting a convention of these people?
And wouldn't it be promoting atheism if it subsidized an atheist
convention? One could argue that the government is no more
supporting religion or atheism in these cases than it would be
supporting prostitution if it supported a convention of sex
workers. As long as the bottom line is the bottom line, the
government is just a business partner, not a proponent. It seems
like a fine line to me, though. I must admit, however, that
since the Parliament of the World's Religions isn't a particular
religion, even the U.S. government might justify subsidizing the
group without violating the constitutional prohibition of the
state favoring a particular religion. If the group is willing to
join forces with atheists and agnostics in promoting harmony,
peace, and justice, then I probably wouldn't object to my government throwing
a few tax dollars their way. I don't have to worry about any
level of government in the U.S. subsidizing atheists (or gays!).
Atheists are such a despised minority in this country that
the likelihood of any government agency providing grants or
subsidies to any atheist group is effectively nil.

I've already
mentioned that a number of groups have complained to the White
House about the advisory committee that is supposed to provide
advice on how to reform the White House Office of Faith-Based
and Neighborhood Partnerships so that it does not continue to
break down the wall between church and state. Last week, this
committee issued a report dealing with the votes of its 24
members on just two issues.
The issues it voted on demonstrate the hopelessness of making
any progress: 1) Should the government allow nongovernmental
providers of federally funded social services to provide those
services in rooms that contain religious art, scripture,
messages, or symbols? 2) Should the government require houses of
worship to form separate corporations to receive direct federal
social service funds? It is insulting that the committee is even
asking these questions. It is demoralizing that more than half
said yes to the first and half said no to the second question.

__________

1.
Other sources state the amount given to the religious convention
at $2 million.
In response to my question about this discrepancy, Nicholls
says: "It is my understanding the federal government supplied 2
million dollars, the Victorian government came good for another
2 million dollars, and the Melbourne City Council coughed up
500,000."

update: 9 Mar
2010.
Religious Rights: Hiring Discrimination? Today, President
Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood
Partnerships will present their recommendations for his
Faith-Based Office to him....one key reform recommendation is
notably absent: a law requiring religious organizations that
receive federal funding to stop discriminating in their hiring
practices based on religion.

But what about Catholic hospitals? It
can't be denied that they provide a vital service to the
community, but if they get government subsidies or tax breaks,
does that mean they can disregard discrimination laws and hire
only Catholics or fire anyone who leaves the church? Yes, if
the country is Germany.

You then link to
an article that decries the case of a hospital worker who
was fired from a Catholic hospital after leaving the Church and
who was subsequently denied public unemployment benefits for 12
weeks because she had "only herself to blame" for losing her
job.

I have two points of criticism on this:

1. The facts of the
case as described in the linked article are outdated. A federal
court overturned the ruling and granted benefits to the former
hospital worker from the first day of her unemployment (http://www.ibka.org/node/598
- German only, sorry, but maybe you can have it translated by
Google). This kind of restores my confidence in German courts.
The woman did not get her job back, however, so technically, the
statement in your own article is still correct. Church
organizations in Germany do have the right to select their
employees based on their faith.

2. The linked article
gives a totally distorted picture of the situation in Germany,
speaking of "the stranglehold that the churches have on
employment in Germany", "the preponderance of 'faith-based'
employers", fears of being an "outcast" or "social vermin" and
such nonsense. This is preposterous. I am a proud atheist and
have never experienced any difficulties, because religion does
not play a major role in everyday life. In fact, employers
hardly ever care about your faith or non-faith, and you don't
have to provide any information in this regard when you apply
for a job. Institutions owned by the Church are the one
exception, but even here the article provides false information,
claiming that “'faith-based' institutions control 87% of the
hospital beds". This is untrue: In current statistics, only
about a third of all hospital beds are owned by institutions
called "freigemeinnützig", a legal term which comprises
faith-based but also non-faith-based non-profit organizations (German
again). Still a significant share, but a very different
situation with respect to the employment opportunities of
atheist workers.

In my opinion, you
should reconsider whether the site you linked to is really a
reliable source to quote.

Kind regards

Holger Märtens, Germany

reply: I sent Herr Märtens' criticisms to the
author of the article he complains about, Muriel Fraser. I have
had correspondence with Ms. Fraser before and consider her a
trustworthy source. In any case, I'll let her defend herself.
She does a much better job of it than I could.

1. "The facts of the case as described in the
linked article are outdated."

Yes, because the article is clearly dated June 2006. The
percentage of hospital beds in church-run institutions which was
cited in the article was taken from Carsten Frerk’s standard
work, Caritas und Diakonie, (page 35), which was
published in 2005. He's an authority on church finances and they
don't dispute his figures. Any doubts about these statistics for
2005 might be best taken up with Dr. Frerk. As to the main
topic, the church labor laws, an update about several court
challenges in light of the new antidiscrimination legislation
can be found
here.

The title translates as “Catholic clinic: Fired due to second
marriage”) and it’s dated 1 July 2010. Although the doctor got
his job back on a technicality, (as the church-run hospital
hadn't been consistent) the court affirmed the right of the
church in principle to fire him. And crucially, the decision was
based not on the EU antidiscrimination law, but on the German
Constitution which allows the churches to run their own affairs
“independently”. See article 137.3 of the Appendix
here.

2. "I
am a proud atheist and have never experienced any difficulties.”

Mr.
Märtens’ doubts
appear to be based solely on personal experience. Has he talked
to people from many walks of life in both town and country, and
read online forums where people seek advice from each other on
how to cope with church employment practices? Perhaps he might
also be interested in reading articles like the one published by
a German trade union which has a membership of 2.2 million,
Annette Jensen's "Under God’s roof"
here.

Or
he might take a look at the excerpt from Dr. Frerk about the
conditions encountered by the 2.5 million employees of the
churches
here.

After the government, the churches are the largest employers in
Germany. Dr. Frerk includes a standard employment contract
stipulating that one can be fired from a Catholic institution
without notice for “serious breaches” of Canon Law. These
include leaving the Church, living together without marriage, or
even marrying someone who has been divorced, (since the Church
doesn’t recognize this and views it as adultery). A church
institution can investigate the private life of an employee on
the basis of an anonymous tip, as happened very recently in the
case mentioned above of the doctor fired from a Catholic clinic
when he remarried.

It
is nice that Mr. Märtens has “never
experienced any difficulties”, but 2.5 million of his countrymen
risk losing their jobs if their private lives do not conform to
church teachings.

Muriel Fraser

Holger Märtens
replies:

Thank you for your
prompt reply. Also, it is an excellent idea to give Ms Fraser
the opportunity to comment. Unfortunately, she only addresses
the minor points of my criticism:

Regarding the
outdated case information, this was directed at you as much as
at Ms Fraser, so you could complement your reference to her
article. Still, the age of her article is only a partial excuse.
Other authors try to follow up on their stories and post new
articles or updates. You yourself do that routinely; why can't
Ms Fraser? She even makes it difficult for readers to follow the
cases by themselves because she does not provide a case number
or a relevant link. In fact, I'm only guessing that the more
recent article I found relates to the same case, although it
does seem likely.

reply: Actually, I
don't always follow up on my articles. I've written on thousands
of topics and can't keep up with them all. I rely on the
kindness of strangers, such as yourself, to keep me informed of
important changes.

Regarding the 87%
figure, she refers me to her source, Dr. Frerk. (She didn't name
her sources in her article.) I e-mailed him and will let you
know when I get an answer. Until then, I consider it problematic
to quote such an outrageous number without questioning it. Think
about it: 87% of hospital capacity controlled by religious
organizations? That's something you might expect in Iran, not in
a Western industrialized country!

[note:
update regarding Dr. Frerk's response: It turns out
that Ms Fraser quoted him incorrectly: The 87% figure does not
refer to the share of church-controlled beds among all German
hospitals. Rather, it is the share of "LIGA" hospitals
controlled by "Caritas" and "Diakonie".

"LIGA der freien
Wohlfahrtspflege" is an association of six charitable
organizations, which seem to comprise either all or the
majority of the "freigemeinnützige" agencies mentioned in the
statistics that I myself quoted. "Caritas" and "Diakonie" are
the two major players within this block, representing the
Catholic and Protestant Churches, respectively. The German Red
Cross is another member.

So, slightly
simplified, 87% seems to be the share of church-run hospitals
among the non-profit ones, not among all hospitals. That's
quite a difference. (It also refers to hospitals, not beds,
but the share of beds is very similar at 88%.)]

Ms Fraser
criticizes the fact that I'm judging by personal experience
regarding the influence of churches and religion in everyday
life. Well, her data is not much better than mine: she has
"talked to people" and "read online forums" where people discuss
their personal experiences. So her information is purely
anecdotal, just like mine. Any statistics or polls on day-to-day
religious harassment would be interesting. I don't have any -
does she or Dr. Frerk?

The remainder of
Ms Fraser's comments seeks to illustrate how the churches'
demand for spiritual "loyalty" makes their employees' lives
difficult, and how controversial their funding is. I never
denied any of this, nor did I defend it (I never complained
about the gist of your article, either), so she is barking up
the wrong tree. What truly bothers me about her writing -- and I
thought I had made that clear -- is the contorted picture she
paints of the supposed religious dominance in everyday life. She
makes Germany appear almost like a theocracy, what with the
"stranglehold" of the churches and all that -- see my first
e-mail. That, as I said, is preposterous. And I find it telling
that Ms Fraser does not seem to have any reply to that.

So yes, the
churches are major employers, and they have a lot of rights (and
a lot of money) that they probably shouldn't have. But even with
2.5 million people employed (mostly indirectly) by the churches,
that still leaves more than 90% of the job market for everyone.
And in the rest of daily life, religion really plays a minor
role. Even though Germany is not by definition a laicist
(laical?) [secular?] country, religious freedom is guaranteed in
our constitution, there is no state church, the state may not
favor any religion over another, etc. We also have some of the
more stringent anti-discrimination laws. The special rights of
the churches are a problem, as are the concordats. There's still
a lot of work to do.

In practice, I
venture to say that things are much more relaxed here than, say,
in the U.S. For instance, our politicians do not (have to)
flaunt their faith in public. In fact, they tend to tone down
their religious views to attract a wider group of voters. We
have a gay Foreign Secretary as well as a gay
minister-president, at least one Muslim secretary (state level)
and an unknown number of atheist or agnostic secretaries --
unknown because most people just don't care.

"Stranglehold of
the churches" - indeed!

Kind regards

Holger Märtens

Muriel Fraser
replies to Herr Märtens:

I thank Mr. Märtens for
correcting my misinterpretation of Dr. Frerk's figures. Mr.
Märtens and I appear to disagree as to what the issue is. As far
as I can make out, his main concern is Germany's international
image, whereas I'm concerned about the denial of rights to
millions of individual Germans.

He wants to discount the
massive anecdotal evidence of discrimination until and unless
there are "statistics or polls on day-to-day religious
harassment". But who is going to pay for these? (I once tried to
informally question Germans about religious employment
pressures: a selection of the results is
here.)

It's not much consolation to a
particular individual to point out, as Mr. Märtens does, that
90% of the job market is not controlled by the churches, if the
other 10% happens to include most or even all of the jobs
available to you in your particular profession and in your
particular neighbourhood. Especially for health workers,
teachers, and those providing various social services this is
far from being a rare occurrence.

Mr. Märtens also mentions
Germany's “stringent anti-discrimination laws”. However, he
fails to note that these were reluctantly brought in as an
obligation of membership in the European Union; that, because of
objections from the churches, Germany delayed them until three
years after the 2003 EU deadline had passed; and that, due to
church lobbying, when they finally got through, they contained a
"church clause" which allows religious discrimination against
2.5 million people. Actually, this last is what I thought we
were talking about, but Mr. Märtens seems to be focussed instead
on Germany's image abroad.

He's perfectly free to discuss
that with someone else. However, I prefer to concentrate on
human rights and, as far as I can see, the full exercise of
these requires clear separation of church and state. That's a
far cry from the German setup which provides the churches with
exemptions to EU anti-discrimination norms. This, in turn,
places the vast empire of church institutions (overwhelmingly
funded by the state) under the German Constitution and this lets
them deny to their 2.5 million employees many of the legal
guarantees enjoyed by others.